Skyview PFD Behavior at Dusk

[krw5927]

Last evening I was flying around my home airport around dusk.  As the sun started to set, my Skyview PFD changed colors and showed a dark blue sky and dark blue terrain.  It seemed that if I turned away from the setting sun everything was the dark color, and if I turned toward it there was a small band of "light" between the dark sky and dark ground.

Is this the expected behavior of synthetic vision?  If I turn synthetic vision off, will the PFD revert to "brighter" colors?

I ask because it was difficult depending on lighting conditions, to discern the horizon line on the display between the dark blue and the dark green.  Have others seen this?

 

[jc2da]

Also, the top status bar looks odd to me. Normally the top status bar is centered in the screen and not skewed to the left, like it is here.

I have never seen those colors before.

 

[dynonsupport]

The top bar is not an issue. This just means you don't have SkyView hooked to a com radio. It's the COM radio that occupies the area above the map, and we don't draw the bar there if we don't have frequencies to display. If you didn't have an AP you wouldn't have the stuff to the left of the XPNDR, and if you didn't have an XPNDR you wouldn't have that area either.

The dark horizon is a software bug that a few people have experienced. It is solved with a reboot, and we have a fix for it in our next software release. It's not tied to the time of day or location, or heading, but it sure can make it look like all of those things when you see it.

A few people have discussed it here:
http://dynonavionics.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1440099053

 

[krw5927]

Wow, thanks for the response on your day off!

Unfortunately the link to the other discussion doesn't work.

Any help to find that other discussion?  Keywords to search, perhaps?   I promise I tried to search for this issue before posting a new thread...

Edit: found it. The other thread talks about this happening when the user makes some sort of change in the map or info or.... I was just flying along, not touching anything on the screen and it happened. You say Dynon has the root cause nailed down and a fix in the next software release?

 

[krw5927]

Did it agin today.  That makes two back-to-back flights.  This is an unacceptable failure rate.

Resetting the display using buttons 1+2+5 solved the problem, but ATC lost my transponder during the re-boot.  I need a fix for this fast.  Flying ifr and losing your horizon reference becuse both the sky and ground are nearly black is not at all acceptable.  Yes, I have suitable backup instrumentation, however if forced to use backup on every flight one starts to wonder why they have a Skyview to begin with. 

 

[jakej]

I certainly wouldn't fly IFR with a 'known' issue : that would be very irresponsible of me, IMO.
Please be careful out there.

Jake J

 

[RV9APlane]

Glad this is reported on here, I had the very same issue yesterday for the first time. I'm 14 hours into phase 1 testing and it was fine until yesterday. Have been spending a lot of time using the maps and autopilot in the last couple flights, not sure if that's relevant. That being said, I'm looking forward to the fix.

 

[dynonsupport]

Apologies that this is happening to you repeatedly.

You can temporarily turn off Synthetic Vision:
PFD > MODE > SYNVIS (push to toggle on and off).

Because this is a bug in v13.0.3, if you'd like to "revert" your SkyView system to v12.2 until the fix is available in v14.0, please contact Dynon Avionics Technical Support for that procedure via email: support AT dynonavionics DOT com.

Did it agin today.  That makes two back-to-back flights.  This is an unacceptable failure rate.

Resetting the display using buttons 1+2+5 solved the problem, but ATC lost my transponder during the re-boot.  I need a fix for this fast.  Flying ifr and losing your horizon reference becuse both the sky and ground are nearly black is not at all acceptable.  Yes, I have suitable backup instrumentation, however if forced to use backup on every flight one starts to wonder why they have a Skyview to begin with. 

 

[krw5927]

Turning off synthetic vision in flight did not fix the issue - the odd colors remained even with synthetic vision turned off. I tried this on flight #2 that experienced the problem, and I can download and send a diagnostic file if needed. (Because of inclement weather, I haven't flown since.)

Do we have any sort of estimate on the timeframe for 14.0? I'd hate to revert just to have 14.0 released a few days later

 

[dynonsupport]

v14.0 is expected to be released "soon", but the Assistant Forum Tender isn't authorized to provide any product release dates.

Turning off synthetic vision in flight did not fix the issue - the odd colors remained even with synthetic vision turned off.  I tried this on flight #2 that experienced the problem, and I can download and send a diagnostic file if needed.  (Because of inclement weather, I haven't flown since.)

Do we have any sort of estimate on the timeframe for 14.0?  I'd hate to revert just to have 14.0 released a few days later